Generate use cases

To understand the organization, the processes, and technologies in place, interview subject matter experts and identify activities and processes that are ideal for automation. Manual and repetitive activities typically performed by Tier-2 and Tier-3 support teams can be automated using established and standardized tools architecture. Providing robust integration solutions between disparate IT systems is another major use case for Atrium Orchestrator. Customers regularly use BMC Atrium Orchestrator to synchronize incident, change, and configuration item (CI) information between BMC's products and other third-party solutions.

From this information, develop key use cases.

Interview stakeholders

The best approach to generating use cases is to organize several one-hour meetings with various stakeholders and title levels within the IT organization. These initial meetings should be high-level conversations that focus on the concepts of orchestration and automation.

Interview structure

Structure the interviews with the following key elements:

State the purpose of meeting: to identify possible areas where orchestration could help
Define orchestration and automation
Determine where in your environment orchestration and automation applies
Provide high-level use case examples
Identify the required systems
Identify the required input and output data
Identify the required business logic
Determine the communication methods
Determine how the data is obtained from the systems
Identify key metrics to capture

Sample questions

To find these use cases, ask relevant questions:

What pains do we have that could be solved if our systems were aware of each other?
What challenges do we have that we wish we could fix?
How often are we experiencing this pain?
Do we have any idea how much it is costing us? In time, money or goodwill?

Sketch out the use case

For each use case that is mentioned, regardless of how minimal or complex it might be, make a sketch on paper that depicts the business processes. Create a series of drawings that illustrate each phase of the use case. Use basic images – square, circle, triangle, rectangle, stick person, and arrows. Label the systems involved, connecting the systems with lines. Define the lines, specifying the types of communication required between the systems. Identify the information that needs to be pushed or pulled from the systems. Determine the amount of time it currently takes to complete each end-to-end use case.

Create the automation roadmap

After you identify the key use cases, develop the automation roadmap. The automation roadmap identifies who is involved and what tasks they will complete.

Where to go to from here

Capture business metrics